The history of the Jewish people is not just one of rise and fall. It is a process, a purification, a sieve of many filters, a smelting furnace that refines the raw ore again and again until only the purest gold remains.

That is why today we are able to do a mitzvah today in a world so foreign to mitzvahs; to fill our lives with that which filled our great-grandparents’ and raise children that way; to go against the stream of the culture around us and be the Jew inherent within.

It is not with our own power, or with our own minds. It is with a hidden memory, an indestructible force that survived as our heritage.